script, third revision

As audience gets into place: two timers are set. Customer sits and reads menu. Waitress US of table. Movement sequence...

C: read menu
W: wipe spot on table
C: coffee/plate rim AND W: fill water, fill coffee
C: no coffee
C: read menu
W: take order (write) (drop pencil)
C: fill condiments
W: turn in order
W: fill condiments (drop condiment)
C: reach, write
C: drop pencil, write
W: carry heavy dishes
W: reach over to deliver food
C: coffee/plate rim AND W: fill condiments
W: wipe table
W: pour water SR
C: signal for check
W: pour water at table
C: no water
W: reach across to give check
W: leave, carry heavy dishes
C: remember tip
C: (drop change) AND W: (drop pencil)
C: signal waitress
W: signal customer

Customer sits in a chair US. Waitress goes to mic in audience.

Voice: Please be aware that someone might be watching you from a hidden camera, so you must be on your best behavior at all times. (Customer nods.)

Voice: Please turn on the television. (Customer nods again, goes to the timer sitting on a table SR, and turns it on.)

Voice: Please call the Learner in and flip the switch. If she does not comply with the rules, please switch the first button in front of you.

Customer nods, calls out: Go! (Waitress enters near chair with ticking timer.)

Customer flips a switch on the table. Waitress crosses to table, resetting timer. Customer crosses back to chair.

Customer slowly scans menu. Simultaneously, Waitress pours water in four directions.

Waitress turns timer to buzz.

Customer sings a list of objects. Waitress resets her timer, then balances two ticking timers – one in each hand. She tries to repeat words the Customer is singing, but gets them wrong. Each time, the Customer glares at her and Waitress freezes before they continue.

Customer:

The list...
Chair
Table
Desk lamp
Clipboard
Egg timer
Light switches
Memory cards
Buzzer
Rhinoceros mask
Cups of coffee
Shoe
Horn
Steam
Race
Helmet
Captain
Forest
Staple
Balcony

Waitress buzzes timer.

Recorded Voice: Each morning, they would put on the masks and perform their roles for the neighborhood; a signpost to the world that everything was as it should be.

Waitress delivers mask to Customer and says: Eggs?

Waitress goes back to table and takes mask for herself. Both put on masks. Customer faces US, Waitress faces DS.

Waitress (whispering): I once had a healer tell me that guilt is a useless emotion. I believe her. But then I begin to feel guilty about not feeling guilty. What is this? Meta-guilt?

Both: pick up change gesture; pick up pencil gesture; juggle mask away from face to right; mask back to face.

Customer: Is the guilt greater or lesser because of distance?

Both make half turn and one step closer; Waitress faces US, Customer faces DS.

Waitress: I once had a healer tell me that guilt is a useless emotion. I believe her. But then I begin to feel guilty about not feeling guilty. What is this? Meta-guilt?

Masks become trays; pouring water gesture 4 times, gradually getting closer to each other.

Customer: Is the guilt greater or lesser because of distance?

Waitress and Customer are extremely close; circle as they repeat (yell) their lines to each other. End Waitress facing US, Customer facing DS.

Customer begins polishing coffee cup gesture with plate.

Waitress: I can no longer live without you. (Goes to table and stacks plates on arm... plates get heavier and heavier as she sinks to the ground.)

Customer: There is no greater love than the love the wolf feels for the lamb it doesn’t eat. The other side of the scene is the paradoxical refined magnificent love of the wolf. It’s not difficult for the ewe to love the lamb. But for the wolf?

Waitress: That need overwhelms us.

Customer: The wolf’s love for the lamb is such a renunciation, it’s a Christ-like move, it’s the wolf’s sacrifice – it’s a love that could never be requited. This wolf that sacrifices its very definition for the lamb, this wolf that doesn’t eat the lamb, is it a wolf? Is it still a wolf?

Waitress: Why does the idea that you are going to eat me up fill me with such pleasure and such terror? It’s to get this pleasure that you need the wolf. The wolf is the truth of love, its cruelty, its fangs, its claws, our aptitude for ferocity.

Customer lays her plate on top of the stack and Waitress falls to ground, spilling plates everywhere.

Recorded Voice sings the following several times:

Forward, the Light Brigade!
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

During the singing, Waitress picks up the plates. Customer hands out light switches to audience members and instructs them to turn them on and off at will. When they do this, a buzzer will sound. Customer operates this buzzer. Each time buzzer goes, Waitress goes into shock, then continues her task. When song finishes...

Waitress (kneeling behind table): Mother, may I fill the glasses with water?

Waitress moves (gesture dance) by end of Customer’s monologue, ends near chair with plates held above head.

Customer (to audience): I’m really sorry. The researcher told me I had to do it. If she were here I could argue with her, but I don’t think she can even hear me. I feel really guilty, I mean, I could have been you in this experiment. If you want to switch places … but I think we have to stay in theses roles. You know the moves. Enter the room, stop, say Mother may I fill the glasses with water, proceed after confirmation, and fill glasses C, M, O, T, H, D, R, K, W, V, Q, A, L, E, and P, in that order. You know the moves. I don't think we really should be talking. Not that I don't want to talk to you. But I think in the rules it states that there should be no contact between us. I'm sorry.

Waitress spills all the plates again and freezes.

Customer: You didn’t say “Mother, may I fill the glasses with water?”

Waitress: The danger is when you create a world, designed as a whole and for a whole people, made up of two individuals. This world-of-two depends for its survival on a single other person.

Both begin to repeat gesture sequence from top of show.

Waitress: The world-of-two is immediately surrounded and threatened by death. Death closes in around it tightly. Love immortalizes me. Only that which gives me life can take it away from me. That which gives, gives to enjoy, that which gives to enjoy, gives to fear its loss. Give to lose. The gift and its opposite.

Customer: That is incorrect.

Customer lays down tip on table and repeats: That is incorrect.

Customer and Waitress continue gesture sequence, becoming more clumsy and extreme until Customer turns off both timers.

Customer and Waitress look at each other, flip off switches around their necks, and we hear recorded scream.

Waitress and Customer look at audience.

Recorded Voice: You have just taken part in an experiment. You voluntarily participated. You were the subject of our experiment. Thank you for your participation.

Waitress and Customer walk out.